The New Pictures

Smoky (20th Century-Fox) is the story of a long, beautiful, rather intense friendship between Fred MacMurray and a horse. An expert Technicolor treatment of Will James's famed (32 editions), 20-year-old novel, the picture is a big-budget Western designed to delight small boys of all ages.

Very little film footage is wasted on what youthful horse-opera fans impatiently call "love stuff." What there is plenty of: gorgeous outdoor backgrounds of feverishly tinted canyons and corrals; convincing skullduggery by a lowdown villain (Bruce Cabot); wonderful incidental ballad singing (Blue Tail Fly and a Johnston office version of Foggy, Foggy Dew) by Burl Ives, 270-lb. troubadour making his movie debut as a guitar-thumping ranch hand.

There are only faint evidences that MacMurray may eventually get the girl (Anne Baxter). But no one really cares very much. The important relationship is between Cowpuncher MacMurray and stallion--two untamed, indomitable critters who have occasional differences but always understand one another. At the fadeout, cowboy and girl stand side by side under a brilliant Western sky, their eyes softly glazed with a love that is plainly directed at the horse.

After two successes with this costly type of horse opera (My Friend Flicka and Thunderhead -- Son of Flicka), 20th Century-Fox knew exactly what it was about in this elaborate remake of Smoky (first, filmed in 1933). Suitable screen credit for Equine Supervision was awarded to Jack Lindell, who claims to have talent-scouted 38 states before he finally discovered a piece of horseflesh handsome enough to play the title role.

Examples of studio thoroughness: a dramatic academy, manned by five instructors, sweated to teach Smoky's cast of 40-odd horses how to register basic emotions for the camera (no tricks); the star's glossy black hide, which began to bleach in spots after several weeks on location in the Utah sun, had to be touched up periodically with walnut stain makeup.

Before he even took a screen test, Smoky was signed to a seven-year acting contract at a beginning salary of $300 a week. Actor MacMurray's gross earnings for the year 1944, reported fortnight ago by the U.S. Treasury: $213,333.33.

Night and Day (Warner), purporting to be a biography of popular Songsmith Cole Porter, is another of Hollywood's celluloid shrines to the living.*

Life thus far, according to this picture, has been busy but mildly boring for Composer Porter (Cary Grant). As a youth with a talent for songwriting, he annoys a wealthy grandfather by walking out on his Yale law books. Pride prompts him to snub the girl he loves--a well-to-do blonde (Alexis Smith) who longs to support him. Eventually wed, famed and wallowing in royalties, he gets into domestic hot water by neglecting pretty Mrs. Porter for his fascinating work.

Rickety as it is, this plot is a serviceable enough peg on which to drape a few fine, aged-in-the-memory Porter tunes (Night and Day, Begin the Beguine, Miss Otis Regrets, etc.). The whole picture might have been good fun except for the Hollywood biographer's self-conscious awe at stalking a real life hero. Cole Porter's melodies and intricate lyrics are admired both in & out of Tin Pan Alley, but that is hardly sufficient excuse for steamrolling the man himself with the same deadpan, posthumous reverence that the movies used on Zola, Pasteur, Woodrow Wilson and Mme. Curie.

Yale's ex-Drama Instructor Monty ("The Beard") Woolley and Singer Mary Martin, friends of the real Porters, play themselves so persuasively that the screen Porters begin to look like mere love interest in a Technicolor musical.

Problem Drinkers (MARCH OF TIME) wrestles energetically and efficiently with some of the questions left over from The Lost Weekend. What is to be done about the tippler who just can't let the stuff alone? Should he be ostracized? Hospitalized? Jailed?

Alcoholism, "America's fourth largest health problem," says the MARCH OF TIME, is more than just an unpleasant habit: it is a disease that calls for expert, scientific and, above all, sympathetic treatment. The film first takes a brief look at past & present U.S. efforts to fight alcoholism--from the oldtime bluenose dry crusades to Yale's modern School of Alcoholic Studies. Then it dramatizes the case history of one unhappy dipsomaniac who was able to snap out of it.

Outstanding among all anti-drunkenness efforts is Alcoholics Anonymous, the nationwide organization of ex-alcoholics who stand ready day & night to advise, encourage and help confirmed drinkers who honestly want to help themselves. The film's strong implication: A.A.'s record (over 24,000 recoveries, success in 75% of all cases) is a lot more impressive than any dry-law triumph the W.C.T.U. ever dared to claim.

*Other contemporaries whose film biographies have been completed, begun or seriously contemplated: Billy Rose, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Al Jolson, the Dorsey brothers, Jack Benny, Sister Kenny, Irving Berlin, S. Hurok.

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